This is a guest post by Eric Worral about 5 tips on how to double your YouTube Affiliate Revenue.
I’ll be honest. I’m a little jealous of bloggers and their ability to drive traffic to their affiliate partners.
They have giant buttons, customizable links, sidebars, clickable images and even exit pops as ways to get clicks on their affiliate links.
With YouTube, it’s a little more difficult to get the click because YouTube wants their viewers to binge-watch videos… not clicking affiliate links.
In this post, I’ll provide 5 tips to help increase your CTR on your affiliate links on YouTube. If you can double your clicks you can double your revenue so let’s get to it.
Tip #1 – Commitment & Consistency
If you haven’t read Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence The Psychology of Persuasion” it’s a must-read for any marketer.
He talks about the “Commitment & Consistency Effect” and explains how people want to act consistent with their past actions and overall identity.
This is something you can use in your videos by tapping into the identity of your audience. Let’s say you did a review of a vegan protein powder on your YouTube channel. It’s a safe assumption that the majority of people watching that video are vegan.
This is where you can add a call-to-action (CTA) in your videos that plays into the Commitment & Consistency Effect.
You may say something like…
“In the description below I have an affiliate link for Vega Sport Premium Protein Powder. If you’re vegan and you care about nutrition and knowing where your food comes from then you’ll love this product.”
The bolded section is an example of tapping into someone’s identity as a vegan to provide extra motivation for why they should be purchasing this product. It’s just one additional sentence but it can help increase your clicks.
A quick note that if you are using Amazon’s affiliate program then you need to be careful about the language you use to ensure you aren’t “incentivizing” a click as that could get you kicked out of Amazon’s Operating Agreement.
Tip #2 – Create a Visual Callout
There’s a metric I’m a little obsessed with called VPC (“views per click”). I’m obsessed because when that metric goes down my cash flow goes up.
One of the easiest ways to lower your VPC is by adding a Visual Callout to your video. This helps to implant a visual in your viewer’s minds of the specific action you’d like them to take.
In the video below I explain what VPC means and how to create a callout.
As mentioned in the video, I use a template I created on Canva to create the static description image I use in editing. Here’s a copy of that template you can use.
It takes me just 3-5 minutes to edit the template and I try to make the description exactly how it will appear when I publish the final video.
Tip #3 – Be Casual
About 10 or so years ago I worked in event marketing alongside a 20 person team of door-to-door agents. I would set up events in neighborhoods with the goal of getting the local homeowners to sign up for high-speed internet service.
The problem was that I was blowing sales left and right. In this quick video, I explain how I made more sales by being more casual.
Try and assess how you come off in your CTAs in your videos.
If your body language and tone aren’t right it could deter people from taking action. Be confident and casual with your CTAs and you’ll see your CTR go up!
(Just remember not to straight-up ask people to click your links to support your channel – once again, that’s “incentivizing” a click and Amazon’s not a fan!)
Tip #4 – Pinned Comments
This is a quick and simple tip but not everyone is doing it.
You should be duplicating your CTAs from your description into the comment section of your video. Then you need to pin that comment.
I’ll assume you know how to comment on your video but to pin it you just need to click on the 3 dots to the right of your comment and then select “Pin.”
Just be sure to provide proper affiliate disclosures in your pinned comment just like you would in your description.
From my experience, the majority of your clicks will come from the description but you can bump up your clicks a little bit in a matter of minutes by adding pinned comments.
That’s because different people use the platform in different ways. Some users will blow right past the description and go to the comments. You can increase your clicks by capturing these users with pinned comments.
Tip #5 Use Choice Pages
Amazon is by far the #1 e-commerce store today. But… that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other options available out there, and by providing options you can actually drive more sales too.
This is a great case study of how YouTube creator Armando Ferreira doubled his commissions with Choice Pages.
If you send any traffic at all to Amazon you’ll want to check out that case study above.
Eric Worral has been a YouTuber since 2012 and in 2018 he really started to dial into affiliate marketing on the platform. If you’re someone who wants to maximize your revenues from YouTube you should follow along on his Channel The Passive Cabbage Challenge. We hope you enjoyed 5 Tips on how to increase your affiliate revenue.